


The Fort

by things_that_matter



Series: CMBYN: Life with Ollie [48]
Category: Call Me By Your Name (2017), Call Me By Your Name - All Media Types, Call Me by Your Name - André Aciman
Genre: Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Intimacy, M/M, Pillow & Blanket Forts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-17 10:47:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29716002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/things_that_matter/pseuds/things_that_matter
Summary: Elio teaches Oliver how to make a fort.
Relationships: Oliver/Elio Perlman
Series: CMBYN: Life with Ollie [48]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2094873
Comments: 13
Kudos: 37





	The Fort

**Author's Note:**

> This ending though, ugh. These two are saints!

Elio had been squarely against enrolling Ollie in karate classes, but he had to concede that thus far, things had been going great. Some other activities that Ollie had attempted, such as flag football, hadn’t worked out as well. It turned out Ollie was afraid of balls. And bats. And pucks. And clubs. Elio hadn’t been into sports himself, so he wasn’t concerned about it. But, Ollie was. Ollie wanted to do what the other kids his age could do, and that meant playing a sport. Karate seemed to be something Ollie could excel in. He had earned his yellow belt very quickly, and he had also made friends there. Tonight, his karate dojo was having a lock in. Ollie was excited about having a sleepover, more excited still that he was invited, and downright ecstatic when he found out that they would be sleeping all night at the dojo rather than at someone’s house. The little boy was not, however, pleased when he read the invitation and noticed it was called a “lock in.” 

“Are they really going to lock us in?” he’d asked Elio with concern evident in his voice. 

Elio smiled and ruffled his hair. “Well, yes. We lock you in here, too. It just means they lock the doors.”

Ollie’s eyes flitted around the room as if he were already a caged bird. “Sounds risky to me,” he said with a groan. But in the end, he’d gone anyway, and Elio had rarely seen him as thrilled as he was when they’d dropped him off. 

Later, Oliver and Elio lay together on the sofa, barely dressed, indulging in the kind of freedom together that they rarely experienced anymore. Neither of them ever complained about it, but they were both aware how much they were enjoying one another. 

“I love you,” Elio whispered, while trailing his hands along the lines of Oliver’s body. 

Oliver smiled and then kissed him, enjoying Elio's exploration. “I love you, too,” he said. 

“Are you going to miss me next week?” Elio asked. He had been asked to play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra again. He felt Oliver’s arms tighten around him then. 

“Of course,” he answered. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of Elio’s warmth and weight against his own body. 

Elio smiled, too. “Good.” They lay quietly together, and then Elio added, “You’ll get to spend time with Ollie though. He told me he had a lot of fun with you last time I was gone.” 

Oliver nodded. “We did have fun. The only sadness was the fort building debacle.” 

Elio snickered. “Ollie told me about _that_ , too.” Remembering Ollie’s face when he told the story, Elio laughed heartily. Then he made the contented sigh that sometimes follows a good laugh. 

Oliver smirked, “I'm sure he did.” He shook his head, slightly embarrassed. He had somehow made it through life blissfully unaware that he lacked basic fort building skills. 

Elio grinned slyly. “I’ll show you how to build one before I leave. If you want me to.”

Oliver’s eyes brightened. “I do want you to!” he said. Elio nodded. Then Oliver added, “Why not right now?” 

“Now?” Elio sounded skeptical. He was quite enjoying laying on the sofa together, barely dressed. 

Oliver, knowing what Elio was thinking, kissed him on the neck in the way he knew Elio loved, then trailed kisses along to the other side of Elio’s neck. “I’ll make it worth your while,” he promised. 

“I’m in,” Elio whispered back. 

A few minutes later, they were surveying the living room. 

“So, what we have to do first is think about what kind of fort we want. If we want a really intricate fort, sometimes it’s better to make it smaller. It will be more stable, and we can do things then, like adding rooms or secret doors. If the goal is to make it big, then we simply need more space,” Elio explained. 

Oliver looked around, squinting mildly as if he were trying to make a potentially earth-shattering decision. “I want to make one that is both large _and_ intricate,” he finally decided. 

Elio nodded. He almost told Oliver that Ollie was rubbing off on him, because that sounded so much like a decision Ollie would make. But when he saw how genuinely excited Oliver was, he reconsidered. “Ok then we need to clear out this space in the middle,” Elio said, sliding the coffee table to the side. 

Soon enough, the frame was ready. Elio looked around carefully before explaining, “Okay, for the next part, we’re ready to drape the blankets. This can be a tricky part, because you want them to stay up, otherwise you’re dealing with a fort that keeps falling apart.”

Oliver nodded. “That’s what kept happening to ours.” 

“Right,” Elio said. He was unfolding the largest blanket and draping it across some furniture. “So the key is balancing the weight. Leave enough of the weight of the blanket over the furniture,” he explained while demonstrating. “If you don’t, then the weight of the blanket in the middle of the fort will pull the blanket down. I think that’s what happened to yours last time.” 

Oliver grabbed the other side of the blanket to help. “I think I understand. But, why don’t we just weigh it down with something? Like a weight or something?”

Elio had a thoughtful look on his face as he continued showing Oliver how to drape the blankets. “Well, most fort _purists_ wouldn’t use anything like that, but technically you could.” 

Oliver grabbed a hand weight and placed it on top of the coffee table to keep a blanket in place. 

Elio cringed and picked it back up. “Not like that, though,” he explained. “If Ollie, or whoever, were to pull the blanket down by accident, the hand weight might come with it and could hurt someone.” 

Oliver looked stricken. 

“If we need to use a weight, we have to pull the blanket all the way across the furniture and either onto the floor or onto a secondary piece of furniture. Then we can place the weight there…. Like so!” Elio explained. 

Soon enough, they had a basic fort, and then Elio showed Oliver how to make some secret rooms within the fort. After they completed the fort, Oliver smiled and said, “Should we bring in sleeping bags and pillows to see how it feels to lay in it?” 

Elio’s jaw dropped. “You’ve never slept in a fort?!?” 

Oliver shrugged sheepishly. Then he said, “I’ll go get the sleeping bags.” 

As he was walking toward the closet that stored the sleeping bags, Elio called playfully, “Just one sleeping bag!” 

Oliver returned a moment later with one sleeping bag. “You’re not going to sleep in here with me?” 

“No, I am,” replied Elio, raising his eyebrows suggestively. 

Oliver laughed. “Elio, Elio, you forget how tall I am. We can’t sleep in a sleeping bag together.” 

“Separate sleeping bags!?” Elio looked stricken. 

“But, I’ll show you how we can zip two sleeping bags together to make one larger one,” Oliver explained, and this delighted them both. Elio was happy that he’d be sleeping with Oliver after all, and Oliver was happy because he was getting to demonstrate a skill, too. 

Eventually the two of them lay together in their double sleeping bag, surveying the deluxe fort they had built. They’d already told ghost stories and eaten some junk food, so Oliver could fully appreciate the fort building experience. As they lay side by side, skin to skin, Elio asked, “Do you think you’ll remember the steps next week when I’m gone?” 

Oliver nodded. “Sure, you’re an excellent teacher, Elio,” he said, making Elio beam. Elio loved to be complimented by Oliver. Oliver loved Elio’s smile. The fort was darker than their room, but he could still make out every one of Elio’s beautiful features. Those soft pink lips forming the perfect, shy smile was too much for him, so he rolled onto Elio, groaned playfully, and then whispered, “I want to teach you something, too.” 

Elio nodded, breathing deeply. He was more than ready to learn something new. 

Just then, the doorbell rang.

“What. The. Hell.” Oliver groaned, rolling off Elio. 

They both looked stricken. 

They dashed around, locating the clothes they’d been wearing, and slid them on sloppily. 

Elio was standing back, trying to catch his breath. Oliver answered the door to find Ollie with one of the karate instructors. “I’m so sorry to wake you at this time of night,” the instructor explained. “Ollie got a little homesick and wanted to come home.”

Oliver noticed then that Ollie looked exhausted, his eyes glistening with tears. Or hopefully just the need for sleep. Oliver reached down and picked him up, and Ollie wrapped his arms around his neck and rested his head on Oliver’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he whispered into Oliver’s ear. Oliver simply kissed him on the forehead and told him it was fine. 

Elio walked over then and patted Ollie on the back. “Poor thing. You didn’t like the lock in?” he asked. 

Ollie shrugged, “I liked it a little, but not as much as home.” This made both Elio and Oliver smile, because they wanted to make a home for Ollie, and this was confirmation that they’d been successful at it. 

After the karate instructor left, Ollie suddenly jerked his head up, looking dismayed. “You made a fort?!” he asked, confused. 

Oliver sat him down so that he could go check it out. “Elio was teaching me how, so we can make one together next week,” he explained.

Ollie had already gone into the fort, but he poked his head out just long enough to give them both a long, dubious look when he heard this statement. 

“What?” Elio and Oliver asked in unison, unsure what to make of Oliver’s dubious look. 

Ollie looked at them for just a moment longer, as if trying to gaze into their very souls. Finally, as if they passed muster, he said, “I was just making sure you weren’t having fun without me.” 

“ _Never_ ,” Elio said with a laugh as Oliver headed down the hallway to fetch a third sleeping bag. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for all the kudos and comments for this series. It means a lot. This is actually my internal dialogue at times: "Oh yay, I got 8 new kudos. Oh no, I got 68 new views. 60 people hated it." So this morning when I saw so many comments and kudos, it made me really happy! Before I started sharing my writing, I often read fanfic and NEVER left kudos even on stories that I liked and followed. I didn't think the creator would really care one way or another. But, now that I know how vulnerable it can feel to share, I've actually been going back and leaving kudos for writing I read long ago! Thanks for inspiring me pay it forward (and backward, too)!


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